Annie Elizabeth Delany quotes

I'm a hundred-and-one years old and at my age, honey, I can say what I want!
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Years #Age #Honey

I think I'm just as good as anyone. That's the way I was brought up. I'll tell you a secret: I think I'm better! Ha! I remember being aware that colored people were supposed to feel inferior. I knew I was a smart little thing, a personality, an individual - a human being! I couldn't understand how people could look at me and not see that, because it sure was obvious to me.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Smart #Thinking #People

It always seemed to me that white people were judged as individuals. But if a Negro did something stupid or wrong, it was held against all of us.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Stupid #White #Racism

[My mother told me:] "You must decide whether you want to get married someday, or have a career."... I set my sights on the career. I thought, what does any man really have to offer me?
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Mother #Men #Careers

When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now, if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Boys #Average #White

Turning one hundred was the worst birthday of my life. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Turning 101 was not so bad. Once you're past that century mark, it's just not as shocking.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Past #Worst Enemy #Wish

I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn't occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that's all!
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Thinking #People #African American

Once in a while, God sends a good white person my way, even to this day. I think it's God's way of keeping me from becoming too mean. And when he sends a nice one to me, then I have to eat crow. And honey, crow is a tough old bird to eat, let me tell you.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Nice #Mean #Thinking

There are certain stereotypes that are offensive. Some of them don't worry me, though. For instance, I have always thought that Mammy character in Gone with the Wind was mighty funny. And I just loved "Amos 'n' Andy" on the radio. So you see, I have enough confidence in myself that those things did not bother me. I could laugh.
-- Annie Elizabeth Delany

#Character #Wind #Laughing

Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.

I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.

A loud noise will get your fight-or-flight response going. This, over the years, can cause real cardiovascular damage.

The greatest need of our age and of every age, the greatest need of every human heart, is to know the resources and sufficiency of God.

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.

Luckily, I's learned at an early age that self-preservation was the only way to survive with your soul intact.

Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication. .... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century.

He who does not attempt to make peace / When small discords arise, / Is like the bee's hive which leaks drops of honey / Soon, the whole hive collapses.

When I lose my temper, honey, you can't find it any place.

It’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife.